


seeds of nightshade

by leradny



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Brainwashing, Child Abduction, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, untreated mental disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5760133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leradny/pseuds/leradny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snoke trains his protege.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. germination

**Author's Note:**

> An evil twin of sorts to 'degrees and decimeters.' You don't have to read that to understand this. You can [follow me on tumblr](http://www.thegrayship.tumblr.com) for updates/musings/etc.

There is the child: Far away with the Jedi Master, at the very furthest reach of Snoke’s power. A bright gem of Force potential, but unpolished, raw, and up until now, detestably close to the light.

Snoke has done what he could from his vantage point. But as long as the boy’s mother hovered, Snoke’s power was limited. The princess of a dead planet was accursedly staunch, and had deterred many of Snoke’s attempts to call the boy to him.

Separating the mother from her son was a matter of subtlety. While difficult, the challenge was useful; Dark users rarely reveal themselves, even to other factions, and they rarely take students trained in other Dark disciplines. When the Jedi were commonplace, they had often fallen; but Snoke is out of practice turning them now.

The boy’s uncle is soft, overconfident with his redemption of Vader and his own skill in the Force; he believes anyone can be redeemed. He will be soft with the child as well, far too lenient to head off Snoke’s call. By the time the boy has turned, he will too far from his uncle’s path to return.

\- - -

The boy’s sensitivity is a boon and a curse all at once.

He pines in his room for his mother and father, as many of the younglings do. Before, when Snoke tried to hammer childhood rages into tantrums, tears into despair, the boy ran to his mother, recognizing that someone else had intruded into his mind.

Snoke remains at a distance. He casts about the first few days for a crack, any opening, but the boy’s uncle guards him too closely, aware of the shadow his sister had seen. Then, clear as crystal, the boy’s dreams are laid bare.

They are filled with the warm fur of his father’s Wookie companion and the whirr of ship engines. Snoke seizes it, weaves it into a fantastic dream of his father taking him on an adventure.

The boy sleeps deep; he arises before the other younglings. His mind is open as a book, brimming with emotion. He keeps it in check, a private happiness.

Snoke sets a twig in the floodline of emotion to change its course:

~~I will never see my family again.~~

The boy’s laughter falls to despair in the blink of an eye, but he does not weep, in order to let the others rest undisturbed. Perfect. Snoke sends the thought to all of the other younglings; they all awaken grieving for their lost lives. Then another child wails, setting off a mass hysteria of tears in the creche.

The Jedi master arrives, and in the chaos begins to soothe them by the loudest first. As the boy awaits his uncle, Snoke approaches again:

~~I do not need his help.~~

With a struggle, the boy stops his tears; by the time his uncle reaches him, he sits up straight on his bed, cheeks damp but eyes and mind quieted.

“Very good,” the Jedi says, smiling. He passes his nephew over, to settle the next weeping child.

This awakens exactly what Snoke had hoped for: A sliver of _pride_.


	2. hybridize

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel awful at how easy it is for me to write this fic.

"But, Uncle Luke--"

" _Master_ Luke," the Jedi says, mildly, but firmly. It matters not that they are alone; the Jedi has insisted that the boy call him Master, in order to keep the other padawans from resenting the familial bond.

"Master Luke--" The title is clumsy. The boy sits in his crosslegged position, squirming with humiliation, and a hint of pain. "I don't understand what I did wrong."

"That is why I am explaining it to you."

From a galaxy away, Snoke festers with impatience, of a different sort than the boy's helpless bewilderment. While the boy is brimming with all sorts of negative emotions conducive to the Dark side, his Master is right there, watching his nephew like a hawk. His Light presence shines so brightly that any thread of Snoke's power would be perilously evident. There is no margin for error; Snoke must wait for the Jedi's guard to lower. With a heavy groan, he allows the disciplinary action to unfold.

"What did I tell you to do, Ben?" The Jedi, on his part, bubbles with disappointment and resignation, but swathes it in a thick layer of patience and compassion.

"Lift the rock."

A pause. The Jedi softens, and Snoke very nearly steps in right then--but no, it is still too soon.

"That wasn't my complete order. I said to lift the stone..." The Jedi floats a pebble into the air until it settles at about waist high. "And hold it here. Where did you hold yours?"

"Higher."

"Can you tell me exactly how much higher?"

"No. It was just higher. Isn't that what you wanted?"

The Jedi sighs in resignation; Snoke, with irritation.

"This exercise is not a competition of brute force," the Jedi says. "I would prefer it not be a competition at all. But if you must compare yourself to others, this exercise is meant to heighten your precision in using the Force. An exercise in awareness, reliability--discipline." A series of other pebbles, of similar shape and size, levitate into the air and drift towards Luke. "In any situation, it helps a great deal to sense where things are in relation to each other, physically or otherwise." He does not elaborate what 'otherwise' entails; the boy is mystified and intrigued.

"It does not matter how large the rock is, or how high you hold it; what matters is that you can do this the same way, five times, or ten times, or a thousand times." The handful of suspended stones shifts and neatens into a small sphere hanging in the air, each one exactly the same distance from each other. "And to do this exactly the same way every time, you must pay attention to how high you lift the first stone."

As infuriatingly basic as the lecture is, Snoke must admit that he is not the six-year-old youngling it is directed to, and the exercise when performed by a Master is a quite elegant display of Force control.

"Can you tell me how high these stones are from the ground, and from each other?" The boy reaches out, and his Master holds up a hand. "With the Force."

The boy shuts his eyes, and a wave of relief rushes alongside his pang of terror at being wrong.

Unfortunately, Snoke has no idea how high the stones are himself, being much too far away in his own temple and unable to siphon off Luke's consciousness without being found out. Otherwise, he would use this to increase the boy's pride. Perhaps, though... He gives a pull to the thinnest thread connecting himself to the boy. The boy's distress increases as his focus degrades, and he cries, "I don't know!"

"It's all right, Ben--" The Jedi puts a hand on the boy's shoulder--ah, there it is! He thinks the distress comes from the boy himself. "You were mistaken on the goal--that's all. Calm yourself. Focus."

Still, Snoke must tread with caution. He limits himself to a projection of two simple words; nothing more.

~~I can't.~~

"I can't!" On his own, the boy repeats it, and starts to wallow in his misery and failure. "I can't, I can't, I can't--"

"Shh--Ben--deep breaths--"

The stones begin to rattle out of place as the boy sobs, and the Jedi drops them to the floor in his own distraction. Snoke breathes a sigh of relief, exhausted, and relinquishes his hold for the time. The boy's tantrum will last on its own. Ironically, the precision and discipline of Jedi is why so many of them have made powerful assets of the Dark, if only they could be turned. Perhaps this Jedi training is not entirely useless. Snoke ponders the thought of allowing the boy to finish his Jedi training as his grandfather did, rather than wresting him from his Master. But then, that would leave the boy open to redemption from friends, family, lovers.

A quandary. Snoke must contemplate further.


	3. shear

Snoke paces back and forth in his chambers, cursing in his native tongue.

As long as the light encircling the boy remains strong, Snoke cannot influence him any further. The boy's mind had been gaping like an open wound under Snoke's careful ministrations, but he had forgotten of the others in the temple. It was not even the Jedi Master who had begun scattering Snoke's plans to the wind, but one of his fellow younglings.

Nor even a human youngling--but a Hjanion filly!

The creature had escaped Snoke's notice. It is outside the interests of most Darksiders to develop their abilities to communicate in other tongues. They sense emotion and act accordingly. And Snoke had been utterly uninterested in any other padawan, unless it was to keep them away from his pupil. Snoke generally did this by encouraging that magnificent temper.

The boy had looked up; felt a brief pang of interest-- _Hkalo'o is the only one who isn't afraid of me_ \--but Snoke squashed it with a thought of his own. Dutifully the boy turned his face away. But the filly had sensed the depth of his pain, rested her long head on his shoulder. The boy's irritation rapidly turned to sorrow. He sobbed and threw his arms around her neck; once his useless tears were spent, the filly whinnied loudly in her own language and ran for their master.

A floodgate had opened! Snoke hammered command after command at his pupil's mind: ~~They will laugh! They will think I am weak for crying!~~ But the wretched Jedi had sensed the thoughts, if not Snoke's presence, and his aura increased in brightness as he urged, "Please be honest, Ben." The sheer intensity of the light barred Snoke from communicating. He could only watch, helpless, as the boy's mind began to clear of all the fog that had been ushered into it.

"Ben," the Jedi says. "The other padawans have told me you go off to be alone a lot. And it isn't to meditate. You're always very angry when they approach you. But this time you cried. And it wasn't because Hkalo'o made you. Why do you go by yourself so much?"

"I don't know! And I don't know why I cried!" A bubble of anger and humiliation rises, but the Master senses that.

"It's all right to cry," the Master says. "And it's all right that you were angry. Ben, tell me--what makes you want to be alone?"

"I don't know! It's different every time."

Luke scans the memories. _This padawan had been skipping stones and the noise annoyed him; the other padawan climbed a tree and ate all the moq fruit without saving one for him; the others were playing a game and did not invite him to join._ "Then does it truly make you happy, to be left alone?"

~~These questions are too hard. He will leave me alone if I say yes.~~

"No--" the boy cries. "I don't want to be alone! Stop it!"

"Stop what?"

~~Don't tell him! He won't understand.~~

"You won't understand."

The Jedi blinks. "Ben, if I do not understand, I will do my very best to try."

~~He's lying.~~

"But Master Luke doesn't lie!"

~~How can I tell?~~

"Stop it!"

A pause, and then the Jedi Master asks gravely: "Ben? Who are you talking to?"

Snoke withdraws--crams every inch of his presence into his body except for the slightest tendril of power allowing him to see through the boy's eyes.

"I... I was just thinking..." The boy looks down. "Thinking out loud."

"It sounded as if you were having a conversation. With someone I could not see or hear myself."

"It's me," the boy says. "M-my thoughts. Sometimes I think horrible things. I don't mean to--but I can't stop myself and they keep coming--everywhere, even when I sleep!"

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I thought you'd--that you'd call me a monster!"

"You are not a monster, Ben. You are a boy." The Jedi rests a hand on his nephew's shoulder. "I am truly sorry. I had thought your tantrums were normal and disciplined you as such. Now, I realize you were suffering, not being difficult. Until these thoughts have ceased, you will not be able to progress in your training."

An icicle of fear strikes his heart, and Snoke finds it easier to listen. "Are you going to send me away?"

"No!" the Master says. "Of course not. I'll call a shuttle to bring a doctor in, just like when Hkalo'o broke her leg. You are very ill."

"But I'm not sick."

"It is a sickness of the mind, not the body. I cannot tell which one, nor do I have the resources to treat it here."

Snoke cannot push the boy's sadness or it will strengthen the Jedi's resolve. He tries shifting it to anger, but all that comes out is an awkward parroting: "I'm not sick, I'm not sick! I hate you!"

"Ben? Are you really angry at me?"

"Y--yes--" But the boy shakes his head, black curls trembling. His body, if not his voice, is wrested free of Snoke's control, and the boy weeps anyway.

"Perhaps not sick," the Jedi says. "But I can sense that you are in a lot of pain, and very unhappy. We must have that taken care of, Ben. For your safety."

"I don't know! I don't know what's happening to me!"

"I don't know, either," the Jedi says. "But that is what we'll find out soon."

Snoke attempts with the last shred of his power--a useless effort, he knows even as he does it--to use the master's ignorance as a tipping point. But the insufferable Jedi senses the black reach of Snoke's presence and touches a hand to the boy's forehead, focusing a beam of energy into his soul.

The light burns.

Snoke tears away with a howl. No matter how he tries and tries again, the protective aura is too strong and too distant for Snoke to breach.

After the fifth day, he knows it is useless. The boy is too confident in his uncle's compassion (blasted thing it is) to entertain any of the thoughts Snoke thrusts at his mind--and worse yet, the boy's mind is healing. He demolishes the nearest city in his rage. Amongst the charred corpses and rain of ashes in the ruined buildings, Snoke sits in meditation to plan further.

Whatever doubts he had are gone. He cannot let the boy complete his training with the Jedi.


End file.
